


Unfamiliar

by SecondStarOnTheLeft



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-18
Updated: 2013-10-18
Packaged: 2017-12-29 18:44:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 5,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1008762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/pseuds/SecondStarOnTheLeft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bea Fitz was brought in to replace Emily Prentiss. Emily Prentiss was brought in to replace Elle Greenaway. It's starting to look as if the job is cursed, isn't it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on ff.net, moved here in anticipation of my return to writing for CM. Enjoy :)

**Now.**

She'd asked him what he'd do if it was her that was shipped to the hospital in an ambulance once, on a sunny afternoon in her vegetable garden. He hadn't been able to answer. He still didn't have an answer.

"She wants to die somewhere hot," he says, looking out the window at the Seattle rain. "That's why we're retiring to Vegas."

He sees the surprise in the eyes around him, but he ignores it and looks down at his hands.

He wonders if it's too late to start praying, or even to just start believing in a god.

* * *

**Earlier.**

Morgan glanced at Rossi, shrugging as they cleared yet another room in the vast building.

"It looks like he knew we were coming," he murmured, starting to feel uneasy. "I hope Reid and Fitz are okay."

Rossi smiled slightly, checking in a small side room. "Fitz'll take care of Reid. She always does-"

Three gunshots in quick succession echoed through the warehouse, and Rossi and Morgan shared a look.

In seconds, the entire SWAT team plus its BAU helpers was running towards the sound of the noise.

* * *

**Then.**

Morgan and Garcia were so wrapped up in their half-joking argument that they didn't even notice the person leaning against what had been Prentiss' desk in the bullpen, Strauss at her side.

Hotch and Rossi noticed, though, as did Reid and Seaver, who motioned for Morgan and Garcia to shush a minute.

The tall, vaguely athletic looking young woman with the curly light brown hair looked mortified and yet, somehow, defiant. Strauss nodded towards Hotch's office and walked off, expecting both the unit chief and this stranger to follow her, which they duly did.

"They're not replacing Emily, are they?" Garcia asked in a small voice. Morgan sighed.

"It's been six months," he said, shrugging bitterly. "We should have been expecting this."

They waited patiently, all sitting around Morgan's desk, and watched Hotch, Strauss and the new girl talking through his office windows.

"I know her," Seaver said suddenly. "Her name is Beatrice Fitzgerald. She was a few years ahead of me at the academy."

"Wow," Morgan said, quirking an eyebrow. "Her parents didn't like her, did they?"

"She goes by Fitz," Seaver said, tilting her head to look closer at the woman in Hotch's office. "I heard she was in the Pentagon, though. Weird."

Garcia already had her tablet out and was searching for this Beatrice Fitzgerald.

"Irish-American father, French-Canadian mother, dual citizenship but chooses to use an American passport," she read out. "Graduated with a four-point-oh from her exclusive Catholic all-girls school in Boston, went on to Harvard for four years before entering the Academy at barely twenty-three. Top five in all of her classes at the Academy. Worked a counter-terrorism desk job in the Pentagon while attending Georgetown, and now, at thirty years of age, holds an MA in criminology and a BA of psychology." Garcia turned the table around and showed them the yearbook photo from Fitzgerald's senior year of high school. She was a mess of bad hair, thick-lensed glasses and heavy braces.

Morgan looked from the picture on the screen to the woman in the office. "You sure this is her?"

"Same eyes," Rossi said, tilting his head to the side. "You can see it if you ignore the metal-mouth and the glasses."

"You can see that she had braces when she smiles," Seaver said. "Her teeth are sort of too straight, y'know? I heard she's kind of touchy about the impaired vision thing, though."

"She can't be that bad if she can get away without glasses," Garcia said knowledgably.

"Laser surgery," Morgan pointed out. "You just like your frames too much to go without them for long."

The door of Hotch's office opened and he shot them a warning glance to let them know that he was perfectly aware that they'd been snooping into their newest teammate's background.

"Team, meet Beatrice Fitzgerald," Strauss said, walking down the stairs ahead of Hotch and the new girl. "She'll be joining your team from Monday next."

And Strauss was gone. The new girl smiled, held up a hand and waved.

"Call me Fitz."


	2. Chapter 2

**Now.**

"What do you mean,  _we're_ retiring to Vegas? You and Fitz?"

Morgan seemed scandalized by the thought of Reid and Fitz together. Reid shrugged.

Rossi surprise them by laughing. "Typical," he said, shaking his head. "Just typical. Of course Reid would end up with one of the only girls in the country that he could lose his job over."

Reid somehow managed a small smile for Rossi before turning back to Morgan.

"Yes, Bea and I." He sighed.

"As soon as she gets out of here, I think I'll bring her to stay in Vegas for a few weeks."

* * *

**Earlier.**

Another room cleared. He tried to ignore her pointed looks, the looks that she insisted on throwing at him despite the seriousness of the situation and the fact that they were at work, but it was getting more difficult by the second.

"Later, I promise," he murmured as they were pressed close together by a passing SWAT man. She sighed and nodded, and kicked open a door sideways, still focusing on him.

Luckily for her, he noticed the serial killer in the room with the double-barrel shotgun and managed to get her almost out of the way of the bullets.

Unluckily for her, in doing so he turned her sideways, and the bullet found its way into the space under her arm that was bare of Kevlar after it tore across his bicep as they fell.

She didn't even scream. She just passed out.

* * *

**Then.**

Fitz had been with them for almost two months, which translated to three cases, and she was proving herself more than worthy of her place on the team. That didn't mean that they were going to accept her, though.

_Well, I knew it wasn't going to be easy_  she told herself as she tried to ignore the creeping rejection she felt every time the team waited for her to be seated before starting their end-of-case ribbing. She worked diligently at her paperwork, got it done twenty minutes before everyone else and then left them to it. She knew she wasn't wanted, but she felt she needed to do this work, so she wasn't going to  _leave_.

She swung the strap of her bag over her head and let it rest against her hip, heavy with books for her classes at college, and walked towards the door.

"Hey, Fitz," Morgan called, evidently feeling guilty. "Why d'you always leave so early?"

Or not. Were they really that dense? God!

"You really don't know?" she asked incredulously. "I mean, seriously?"

Morgan glanced at Reid and Seaver before shrugging. "Nope."

Fitz pressed the heel of her hand into her eye. She grumbled something that might have been a swear and then looked up.

"Look, I knew coming into this that you guys were close. You're notorious throughout the Bureau – the clique-iest group in the entire place. I was prepared for that. I knew I'd have to work hard to earn even the tiniest modicum of your respect, and I was okay with that. What I wasn't prepared for was the resentment that you've all so kindly showered me with for being here – well, all of you except Hotch, that is. He at least seems to realise why I'm here."

"And why's that?" Morgan asked defensively.

"I'm not trying to replace Emily Prentiss, despite what you all seem to think. I'm here to stop murderers, that's all. If I have to do that without making any friends, well…"

She sighed again and turned away.

"That's fine by me."


	3. Chapter 3

**Now.**

Time seemed to drag as they waited for news from the OR. Garcia had called what felt like a million times, Seaver was pacing the short breadth of the room  _again_  and Reid was on his nineteenth cup of bad coffee.

"Hey, maybe you should ease up on that, man," Morgan said gently, taking the cup from Reid's ever-so-slightly trembling hands. "You'll go into shock or something."

Reid looked up, prepared to rebuke Morgan, but Hotch gave him a quelling look and he closed his mouth.

Rossi walked in with a box of donuts. "The local precinct sent these over," he said, setting them down on the low table in the middle of the room. "A thank you of sorts."

Reid shocked them all by laughing bitterly and standing suddenly before striding angrily from the room.

"And to think we didn't even notice they were together," Seaver said quietly. "Damn."

* * *

**Earlier.**

Morgan skidded to a halt and froze. Reid was kneeling beside Fitz, his vest discarded, his tie tight around his upper arm above a recent bullet wound – a graze – and he was pressing his balled-up cardigan to the bloody mess of Fitz's side. One or two from SWAT were standing around, looking as useless as they apparently felt.

"The paramedics are on their way," Reid said as Rossi appeared. "They'll only be a few minutes. She's going to pull through."

_Not like Emily_ Morgan thought, crouching beside Reid and pushing against the bloody wool with his hands, which were much bigger and a hell of a lot stronger than Reid's. Reid seemed relieved to be able to let go, but he stayed on his knees beside Fitz, his face pale and serious.

"She's going to pull through," he said again. "She is."

* * *

**Then.**

He watched her for a moment when he emerged from the building, faintly amused by the sight of her repeatedly kicking the front driver's wheel of her tidy little Ford Focus.

"Need a ride?" he offered. She turned, surprised, and fixed her face in a mask of impassive apathy.

"Um, sure," she said, her voice toneless. "Thanks."

He paused. "I don't resent you, Fitz. I know you're not here because you're trying to replace Prentiss."

For the first time since her first day at the BAU, he saw a genuine smile on her tired face. It had been a long case, and there had been children and rape involved, and it always hit all of them hard. He'd found out, without Garcia digging further into Fitz's background, that she'd lost a younger sister years ago and had practically crusaded for children's rights in any way she could ever since.

When they pulled up outside her apartment building which wasn't, it turned out, far from his own, she gave him another of those smiles. They'd spent the entire twenty minute journey talking about the possibilities that would be opened up in CERN ever managed to find a stable Higgs-Boson in the hadron collider.

"Call me Bea, Spencer," she said, blushing slightly and tucking her hair behind her ear. "And thank you."

"What for?" he said, perplexed. "Your car mustn't be working. Anyone would have-"

She leaned over and kissed his cheek before getting out of the car.

"Not for the ride," she said, bending over so she was half-through the window. "Although that was a very chivalrous thing to do. Thanks for being nice to me. You're the first person who genuinely hasn't seen me as some sort of interloper since I started working in Quantico. It… It was nice. Thank you, Spencer Reid, last of the gentlemen."

He waited and watched as she walked back to the door and made sure she got inside okay.

Him, a gentleman. He almost laughed.  _Chivalrous._


	4. Chapter 4

**Now.**

"I had headaches not long before Emily died," Reid says when he hears Morgan coming towards him. "I was convinced that they were a sign of a tumour, but I went for tests and nothing showed up. I refused to believe there was a psychosomatic cause. Looks like they were just stress."

Morgan looks at his friend, wearing his sunglasses even though they're inside at half-one in the morning and it's raining heavily outside.

"We both knew that while Strauss might accept Garcia and Kevin as a couple, she'd never accept us," he goes on. "We're both field agents, and we work in one of the highest-risk units in the Bureau."

Morgan isn't sure what he's supposed to say.

* * *

**Earlier.**

"Reid, go with Fitz in the ambulance and get your arm seen to."

Hotch doesn't seem to notice that Reid was heading for the ambulance with Fitz anyways. He's too busy watching over the body of their most recent capture being carted into the coroner's van, because he trusts Reid will look after Fitz. That's what the younger agents do – Seaver too, in her own way, although she often seems to be left out of Reid and Fitz's more intellectual conversations.

And so Seaver, Morgan, Rossi and Hotch follow Reid and Fitz to the hospital, and Hotch knows he's the only one not praying for Fitz's life with a desperate fervour, and he knows that that's only because if she dies, she'll be the first of his teammates to do so.

The others don't know that Emily is alive, though, so he acts the part of the frantic unit chief.

* * *

**Then.**

In the year since Fitz joined the BAU and gave Morgan an earful about treating her differently, things have changed. Reid is no longer the only intellectual on the team. Garcia's no longer the only nerd – although Fitz favoured classic DC comics over Garcia's multiple obsessions – and Morgan's no longer the only serial flirt.

Reid looks up at the pouring sky from his place under the porch of Fitz's apartment building, trying to figure out why exactly he's here. Bea told him that he could drop by anytime, but they were only just home from a case and now she hadn't responded when he'd buzzed-

" _Spencer? Hang on, I'll buzz you up."_

He hears that familiar ringing sound and pushes on the door, thankful to get out of the rain. He's been in Bea's apartment a few times before, mainly when she broke her wrist a few months back, but this is different. This time, he doesn't have an excuse. He's just here to see her.

She opens the door in short pyjama shorts and a huge crimson Harvard t-shirt with her black-and-silver frame glasses resting on the bridge of her freckly nose. She's smiling, and her hair is loose around her shoulders. He notices that there's a little bit of blonde in it – not enough for her to be  _a_ blonde, but it's definitely there.

She waits until he's safely inside and then closes and locks the door. By appearing on her doorstep at eleven o'clock at night just after they'd closed a case, he's starting something that means the door probably won't need to be unlocked until morning.

"Are you sure?" she asks, not bothering to dance around the issue. "I mean, if this is because you're upset about the case or something, we're not doing it. I'm not up for comfort sex. I might flirt a lot, but that's where it ends – I hate the idea of casual sex."

It's nothing to do with the case, distressing though it was. It's because she's beautiful to him, even with her geeky glasses and her retainer, which he hears her pop out when he turns to look out the window.

"I'm sure," he says, taking two steps forward so they're toe-to-toe. "But I agree with what you said earlier. None of the team can know-"

He's cut off by her lips pressing against his, and he pulls her close without pausing to think – a first for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unintentional tense shift here from previous chapters but it shouldn't have rendered anything unreadable


	5. Chapter 5

**Now.**

When the surgeon comes out and asks for family, everyone is slightly affronted when Reid jumps up and steps outside with the bearded man. They count themselves part of Fitz's family too, because she's been with them for almost four years – she's another sister to add to the collection.

Reid walks back in, and he looks as though he might be sick. His arm is up in a sling because a nurse came in and gave out to him maybe twenty minutes ago for not wearing the sling.

"There are some complications," he says in a hollow voice. "The bullet hit her fourth rib. It… Um… There are splinters."

He sways slightly, and they were horrified to see tears in those Bambi eyes that Morgan had teased him about.

"We were going to come clean as soon as we got home," he says, wrapping his good arm around his middle and collapsing into the nearest seat. "That's why we were fighting. I… I proposed, and she said we should wait another while. Make sure we worked as a real couple. We've been together for three years, and she wants to wait to see if we work in public."

* * *

**Earlier.**

He's pulled away from her as soon as they get through the ER doors, and he doesn't like that. He cranes over the nurse and watches as they wheel Bea's gurney away, through a set of swinging double doors, and reluctantly allows himself to be pulled aside so someone can check on his arm.

"Who tied the tourniquet?" asks a doctor who he thinks might be an intern.

"Me," he says shortly. "Is she going to be alright?"

"The chick who came in with you?" The doctor shrugs. "She's on her way up to theatre. Doctor Pullman is good – she's in safe hands."

Morgan pulls the curtain back as the intern starts stitching Reid's arm closed, and sighs.

"She's going to be fine, kid," he says, as much to reassure himself as to reassure Reid.

* * *

**Then.**

Her fingers are in his hair, his hands on her hips, and her head falls back to expose her pale throat to his greedy mouth. He pauses a moment, watching the sunlight play on her hair as it pours through her kitchen window. She moans softly, though, and his attention is back to their activity of choice for the morning as her legs tighten around his hips.

"Spencer…" she whispers, shifting against him as he lowers his mouth to her neck and resumes his slow, easy rhythm. He loves her like this – in their six months together, he's discovered something important. While the wild, intense sex that always occurs on their first night home from a case or their first night together after a separation of more than three or four days is great, he much prefers that gentleness that allows him to love every inch of her.

He has to admit that this is a departure from the norm, even for them, though. He never imagined, on her first day at the BAU, that they'd be in her kitchen, with her sitting half on the counter with her blouse open over her red satin bra and her skirt hitched up around her hips while he made love to her.

She's moments away from her climax, he knows, and he's determined to hold on and watch her, because the absolute ecstasy that takes over her face fascinates him. It also stokes his ego a little, to know that he's the cause of that bliss.

The peak comes with a sigh and a tightening of muscles all over, and he joins her there moments later. It's only then, when their breathing starts coming back to normal, that they realise their phones are ringing.

They quickly disentangle themselves and he walks into the sitting room, tidying himself up as he goes. He can see her doing the same when he turns around to close the door, and is tempted to ignore the phone call.

"Reid."

" _Where are you, man? We've got a case. Wheels up in an hour. Get your ass down here."_

Morgan. Of course. "I'll be there as soon as possible."

" _Why weren't you answering your phone, Reid?"_

"I was reading," he says, knowing that Morgan will accept the excuse. He wishes that he didn't have to lie, but he knows that Bea is right – they need to keep this quiet. Because Strauss seems to operate on a last-in-first-out basis, Bea would lose her job, and he doesn't want that.

It frightens him slightly, how much he loves her, especially when they've only been together for six months, but it also makes him happier than he ever remembers being.


	6. Chapter 6

**Now.**

Reid's hands are trembling more than they ever did when he was on drugs, Morgan thinks. He wonders if now would be a good time to bring Reid to a late-night movie, but thinks better of it – the doctor passed out ten minutes ago, and almost bit Seaver's head off when she suggested he go back to the hotel and get some sleep.

Morgan's phone rings, and he leaves the room to speak to Garcia.

"What's up, Baby Girl?"

" _Did you know that they live together and everything? There are credit card records for a whole house's worth of Ikea."_

* * *

**Earlier.**

She almost wakes as they slam through the swinging doors, wondering what the hell Spencer is doing. It can't be past seven, and she has a thumping headache. It must have been a crazy night-

The gurney rumbles across the entrance to the elevator, and she moans in agony, jolted sharply back to reality. She vaguely hears them saying horrible things like "massive blood loss," "possibility of shards," "cardiac arrest," "pulmonary oedema."

Oh, God, it hurts.

But Spencer was there too.

She can't die if Spencer thinks she's mad at him, even if he's mad at her. She has to live. She has to see him again. Oh, God, she'll marry him tomorrow if that's what it takes. Whatever she needs to promise, she'll promise. She just needs to survive this.

* * *

**Then.**

She watches his hands. His hands are the only part of him that always seem perfectly calm – his hands have never shook or trembled in all the time she's known him.

But they're trembling now.

"Did you think I'd leave you because you were forced into an addiction?"

He looks up, and she notices that he's relieved as opposed to nervous to hear the anger in her voice.

"Spencer-"

"I've never told anyone before," he inserts quickly. "There are people who know, but you're the first I've told. That stands for something, right?"

She can't believe him. He really thought that she said no to his proposal because he used to be addicted to Dilaudid? Jesus fucking Christ, she's been sleeping with him for three years and living with him for two, and he thought that she wouldn't want to marry him because he'd been addicted to Dilaudid?

"My saying  _wait_  has nothing to do with your being a clean addict, Spencer," she says through gritted teeth. "My reason for saying  _wait_  is that you and I have never acted as a normal couple."

"We live together, we share a bed, we go on dates and we spend a lot of our time alone kissing or having sex. I'm pretty sure we're a normal couple."

She sighs, touches his face.

"Spencer, we never told our best friends that we were together. How is that normal? I'm not marrying you right now. We've got plenty of time."

"We're-"

"I know that we're thirty-three and thirty-four. Yes, Spencer, of that I am  _fully_ aware, thanks to Ashley's poor-taste joint birthday party for you and I. But… Spencer, please. I'm not saying  _no,_ I'm saying-"

"Not now."

She watches as he jerks away from her, scoops up his go bag and slams the door behind him on his way out. She doesn't notice that she's crying until she has to answer Garcia's call a moment later, and she does her best to laugh when her friend tells her to pack her waders because they're Seattle bound.


	7. Chapter 7

**Now.**

She wonders what she's done to deserve this, and what he's done to deserve it.

They've both done bad things in their lives – although she has to admit that all the good he's done has definitely cancelled out the drugs and all, while she's still a little away from paying off her own debt.

If she dies, she knows that it will kill him. She just doesn't think she has the strength to fight it anymore, though, because she's cold and tired…

Her back arches high off the table as the paddles are pressed against her failing heart, and there's nothing but white noise and pain.

* * *

**Earlier.**

"Why are you Fitz's next-of-kin?"

Rossi can't seem to get his head around the idea, and Reid sighs, rubbing at the bandage on his upper arm. His fingers touch the faint pink marks on the inside of his elbow and he grimaces, remembering the last real conversation her had with her. With his Bea.

"Because she's more likely to need someone to sign off on her organs while she's working than when she's visiting her mother, isn't she?" he replies sarcastically, angry with Rossi for caring about something so banal while Bea is lying on an operating table with a bullet inside her. He shakes his head and signs the waiver that says he won't hold the hospital responsible if she dies on the table.

The idea makes him sick, and he knows that the only person he'll hold responsible is himself.

* * *

**Then.**

He waits until she gets up to make her tea – boysenberry if they're flying during the day, chamomile at night – and follows her into the kitchenette.

"I over-reacted."

"Yes, you did."

She walks away, and he already regrets getting mad with her earlier. The sooner this damned case is over the better, because then he's going to announce to the whole world that he loves her, consequences bedamned. He'll leave the BAU if that's what it takes – he'd take her before anything, anything at all, and he's only just starting to realise that.

She glances back over her shoulder at him, and he knows that he hurt her when he walked out. He'll have to do something to earn her forgiveness.


	8. Chapter 8

**Now.**

"Doctor Reid? May I speak with you for a moment?"

Hotch never remembers seeing Reid move as fast as he does in this moment, and the door slams shut in his wake, startling all of them. They sit, frozen, and watch as Reid and the doctor in his dark blue scrubs have an earnest, serious conversation.

And then Reid's legs give way, and they can't see him anymore.

* * *

**Earlier.**

"She's going to be fine, Spencer. Sit down."

Seaver is trying her best to comfort him, but to no avail. He just can't get the image of Bea with her side blown open out of his mind. The memory of her blood on his hands. The knowledge that it was him that pushed her so that the bullet could, by some sick miracle, find one of the few parts of her torso that wasn't hidden behind a wall of Kevlar.

He turns again and then sits down, resting his head in his ends with his elbows on his knees.

"She wants to die somewhere hot," he says, looking out the window at the Seattle rain. "That's why we're retiring to Vegas."

He sees the surprise in the eyes around him, but he ignores it and looks down at his hands.

He wonders if it's too late to start praying, or even to just start believing in a god.

* * *

**Then.**

Another room cleared. He tried to ignore her pointed looks, the looks that she insisted on throwing at him despite the seriousness of the situation and the fact that they were at work, but it was getting more difficult by the second.

They'd been in Seattle for almost four days, and he'd half convinced her how sorry he was by insisting she let him into her hotel room and making love to her against the door.

"Later, I promise," he murmured as they were pressed close together by a passing SWAT man. She sighed and nodded, and kicked open a door sideways, still focusing on him.

Luckily for her, he noticed the serial killer in the room with the double-barrel shotgun and managed to get her almost out of the way so she didn't end up with a bullet between the eyes – or indeed the back of her head blown out.

Unluckily for her, in doing so he turned her sideways, and the bullet found its way into the space under her arm after it tore across his bicep as they fell.

She didn't even scream. She just passed out under him as the SWAT team sent seven bullets slamming into the UnSub's body, and he began to panic when the blood started pouring from her side.


	9. Chapter 9

**Now.**

When Morgan crashes into the corridor and skids to a halt, he isn't sure how to deal with the image Reid presents. The doctor is sitting on the floor, leaning back against the wall and staring blindly up at the ceiling with tears running silently down his cheeks. Morgan doesn't ever remember seeing Reid cry, or even come close to it, and it's unnerving to see this side of his friend.

"Hey, kid, what is it?"

Reid looks to Morgan, his eyes visibly focusing.

"She's… She's not out of danger yet, but she's alive, Morgan. Bea's not dead."

Morgan sits beside Reid on the floor, nods once at Seaver when she pokes her head around the door of the waiting room and then concentrates on helping Reid calm down enough to function.

* * *

**Earlier.**

"Yes, Bea and I." Reid sighs. "As soon as she gets out of here, I think I'll bring her to stay in Vegas for a few weeks."

Rossi gives him a strange look, and then tosses a rectangle of plastic across the room. By some stroke of luck, it lands in Reid's lap.

"I like Fitz," Rossi says gruffly. "Take her to Vegas on me. Stay at the Bellagio. I stayed there with my second wife."

Everyone knows that Rossi likes Fitz – on her first day, she called him a sanctimonious bastard, and they've been close ever since.

They know that seeing her lying in a pool of her own blood has shaken him more than Prentiss' death did.

* * *

**Then.**

There's so much blood. On his hands, his arms, the floor, his trousers, darkening her soft hair, splattered across both their faces. He can't lose her like this. She has to die of old age when they're in their late nineties and have been retired to Vegas for years and years.

He pulls the knot tight with his tight, cutting off as much of the blood flow to his arm as is possible, and then he presses as hard as he can against her side, hoping that wool is really as absorbent as he read.

She bought him this cardigan for Christmas, he realises as he watches the dark red of her life seep through the royal blue wool in his hands. Oh, God, no, he can't lose her. No, he can't. He refuses to accept that it might be a possibility and looks up when Morgan skids into view.

"The paramedics are on their way," Reid says as Rossi appears a moment later. "They'll only be a few minutes. She's going to pull through."


	10. Chapter 10

**Now.**

They stand outside the room and let Reid go in on his own. Fitz is wearing a hospital gown, and she's on a ventilator, but her heart is working and she's not dead.

Reid sits in the chair beside her bed, takes the cannula-less hand and kisses her knuckles. It's the most tender, human thing any of them have ever seen him do, and the theory of Reid-and-Fitz suddenly becomes a strange reality.

Hotch and Rossi stand a little way back, arms folded and brows furrowed.

"I still don't understand how we missed it."

"Nor do I. In a way, I'm glad we did."

* * *

**Later.**

Spencer smiles as he stands in the door of Bea's room, watching as she wakes up. Morgan is sitting at one side of her bed, Seaver at the other, and both have to lean back to avoid her suddenly outstretched arms. He probably should have warned them that she wakes violently, spreading herself out as much as she can in a bid to click her back.

Her fingers are on Morgan's hand then, and his wrist, and she's trying to find the shape of his hands.

"Derek," she murmurs without opening her eyes. "Get the fuck away from my bedside. Nurse you are not."

He laughs, startled, and moves. Spencer grins suddenly, and gestures for everyone else to fill the gap.

She tries two more sets of hands and harrumphs, still with closed eyes.

"Spencer, get over here," she says grumpily, patting the bed beside her. "And you'd better have my sleep shirt."

"How do you know that I haven't been beside you already?" he asks, crossing the room and sitting on her bed, near her head, and taking her hand.

"Three things," she says, lifting her free hand and covering her eyes. "First, your Cons squeak on the floor. Second, you smell very different to everyone else on the team. Third, if I didn't know what your hands felt like, Spencer, then you wouldn't be doing your job as my lover right, would you?"

* * *

**When.**

When he stammers his way through a second proposal.

When she walks through the doors of the courtroom.

When he promises himself to her forever.

When she signs that piece of paper and becomes Mrs. Beatrice Fitzgerald-Reid.

When his whole face lights up as he looks down at the little white stick.


End file.
